Baseball-related notes from today’s L.A. Times

1. An article/column about Retrosheet.org and

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its founder David Smith.

2. Someone has finally answered the challenge thrown down by the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim. The Long Beach Armada of the Golden Baseball League are now officially known as The Long Beach Armada of Los Angeles of California of the United States of North America Including Barrow, Alaska.

Baseball in Long Beach

First of all, here’s a link to a baseball piece from Sunday’s Los Angeles Times magazine: the writer and his son go to a Dodgers game with Arnold Hano, author of “A Day in the Bleachers.” Among other things, he doesn’t like the visual and audible cues to get the fans to make noise.

On Sunday, Jason and I went to the second-to-last game of the Golden Baseball League’s short season, this one the Long Beach Armada versus the San Diego Surf Dawgs.

The Armada play at city-owned Blair Field, which has an analog clock on top of the scoreboard…

And there’s a ship in the outfield — unfortunately, it’s just a cutout…

Even though the mascot should be a Spanish conquistador or maybe a pirate, the mascot is actually a bird named Arby I. Here he is “helping” with a between-innings water balloon toss for kids…

And here he is sitting two rows in front of us…

Meanwhile, Rik Currier was on the mound for the Armada, pitching what would be a complete game one-hit shutout…

In some places, they have metal rails for the “K” cards to fit into, but Long Beach is a Velcro kind of town…

The final line…

Yes, “Armada” does look a lot like “Ramada,” especially at the lower left. A missed marketing opportunity!

Nothing’s gonna touch us in these golden (baseball league) years

I get a lot of e-mails offering to hook me up with various items and people, from Russian mail-order brides to university degrees. But on Friday, I got one that was a little different: it was from Fullerton Flyers general manager Ed Hart, thanking me for this baseballrelated.com post, personally inviting me to future games and offering to hook me up with tickets.

What he didn’t know is that Jason and I were already planning a trip to Saturday night’s game; Jason was attracted by a giveaway of bobbleheads in the image of Coal Train, the coyote mascot. Jason managed to get a couple of other people to join us — Errol, who he knows from a web site/message board he frequents, as well as Jason’s and my friend Rachel, who was more or less filling in for Levi, since she’s from a small town in southern Illinois (Clay City) and likes the Cardinals, although she has a full head of hair, eats meat, and doesn’t take her shoes off that often. Anyway, I spoke to Ed briefly on the phone, he asked me how to spell my last name, and there were tickets waiting for me at the will-call window, although there were a few moments of confusion when I thought the guy behind the window was asking me for my name, but he was actually asking me for the name of the person who left the tickets for me, which I should have remembered is the more important concept at minor-league will-call windows.

The Flyers were playing the Chico Outlaws again, although since the Outlaws were wearing gray shirts instead of black, it was like we were watching a completely different team. And this time, the Outlaws had a couple of big innings and won 8-2. After the game, Ed Hart was standing by the exit gate, so I introduced myself and we chatted a little bit; turns out he’d just been Googling for mentions of the Flyers and happened to run across baseballrelated.com.

Not too many pictures this time; I posted the “no frowns” portion of the sign at the gate last time, and here are more Golden Baseball League rules…

And here’s Coal Train with my other bobbleheads (Fernando Valenzuela, Kirk Gibson, and a hidden Tim Salmon)…

Incidentally, something that made Rachel laugh a lot: the Flyers’ catcher was Drew York, and I suggested that when he came to bat with the Flyers needing a hit, or a run, or whatever, that the crowd should sing “It’s up to you, Drew York, Drew York!”

Thanks again for the tickets, Ed!

Baseball turns to gold

Last Friday — I’m only just now posting this because I was waiting for my DSL to be active before uploading the photos — Jason and I went to see the Fullerton Flyers play the Chico Outlaws. This is the Golden Baseball League, a brand-new independent league with four teams in California, three teams in Arizona, and one team that doesn’t have a home. So we braved Fourth of July weekend traffic on our way to the campus of Cal State University Fullerton (yes, we’re in the car pool lane, but it was still slow going)…

We liked it right from the get-go, because while we were in the ticket line, we heard the people in line behind us discussing the fact that you could get 2-for-1 tickets if you showed a Vons or Pavilions club card. Jason did so, and so we got two tickets for $8. (The offer on the web site says you’re supposed to have a club card and a receipt, but they didn’t ask him for a receipt.) They also handed out free full-color programs including rosters and scorecards — nothing too elaborate, 12 pages, 5-1/2 by 8-1/2.

The name “Fullerton Flyers” is railroad-related, because Fullerton is a railroad town (they even have an event called Fullerton Railroad Days every year). And the theme extended to the front gate…

Incidentally, here’s a close-up of the poster at the gate. Notice what’s at the bottom of the list of prohibited items. I’m not sure how they enforce it…

And the concessions trailer has railroad heralds stuck to it, seemingly at random (neither the Rio Grande nor the Pennsylvania Railroad ever served Fullerton)…

And the mascot’s name is Coal Train, who is apparently a coyote wearing engineer’s overalls. I’m not sure what a coyote has to do with railroading, except that there were a few Road Runner cartoons in which Wile E. Coyote got run over by trains…

Because of the train and the coyote, they have two sound effects, the “train whistle” and the “coyote howl,” that are played incessantly over the P.A. system. In fact, “Charge” isn’t da-da-da-da-da-da, “Charge!”, it’s da-da-da-da-da-da, howl.

The Cal State Fullerton Titans baseball team has a weird set of retired numbers in right center. Oh, wait, those aren’t retired numbers, those are the years they won the national championship…

The Flyers pitch to the Outlaws…

The Flyers’ Garry Templeton II — son of Flyers manager Garry Templeton — attempts a bunt…

Jason bought the “medium” size of Kettle Korn, so named because the bag could feed a medium-sized European country…

The size of the Kettle Korn is probably why Coal Train was doing exercises with some kids on the field at one point…

It was Wacky Hat Night, but I didn’t manage to get any pictures of the truly wacky hats, just this patriotic attempt in front of us…

And this, which isn’t so much wacky as it is a souvenir of the Billy Goat Tavern…

Don’t you hate people who talk on their cell phones at baseball games?

The Flyers won 3-2 (I couldn’t get a good picture of the scoreboard through the netting to prove this), with the difference being a home run by Fullerton catcher Casey Clary; the attendance was announced as 758. The level of play was similar to Class A in the “official” minor leagues, I’d estimate. One plus of the Golden Baseball League: their “competition,” the California League, uses the designated hitter; the GBL doesn’t.